abundance of their airy flowers, faintly yet most definitely sweet on the evening air.
I look up and see the crowded blooms drooping in pensive beauty above my head. The guelder-rose's summer snow-balls, and the mock-orange with its penetrating odor, whiten the still gardens as we pass. The billowy meadow-grass, the tall red sorrel, the untidy, ragged robin, all the yearly-recurring May miracles! What can I say, O my friends, to set them fairly before you?
Under the trees the townsfolk are walking, chatting low and friendly. A soldier has his arm round a fat-faced Mädchen's waist, an attention which she takes with the stolidity engendered by long habit. Dear, willing, panting dogs, are laboriously dragging the washer-women's little carts up-hill.
"Vick," say I, gravely, "how would you like to drag a little cart to the wash?"
Vick does not answer verbally, but she stretches her small neck over the carriage-side, and gives a disdainful yet inquisitive smell at her low brethren. No words could express a fuller contempt for a dog that earns his own living.
The driver is taking his horses along very easily, but we do not care to hurry him. I have not felt so happy, so at ease, so gay, since I was wed.
"This is nice," say I, making a frantic snatch at a long acacia-droop; "how I wish they were all here!"
Sir Roger laughs a little, and raises his eyebrows slightly.
"Do you mean with us—now—in the carriage? Should not we be rather a tight fit?"
"Rather," say I, laughing too. "We should be puzzled how to pack them all, should not we? We would be like the animals in a Noah's ark."
A little pause.
"General," say I, impulsively, "it has just occurred to me, are not you sometimes deadly, deadly tired of hearing about the boys? I am sure I should be, if I were you. Confess! I will try not to be any angrier with you than I can help; but do not you sometimes wish that Algy and Bobby, and the Brat—not to speak of Tou Tou—were drowned in the Red Sea, or in the horse-pond, at home?"
"At least you gave me fair warning," he says, with a smile. "Do you remember telling me that whoever married you would have to marry all six?"
"I wish you would not remind me of that," say I, reddening.
It was quite the broadest hint any one ever gave. The evening is deepening. We have reached Weisserhoisch. Now our faces are turned homeward again. As we pass the entrance to the Gardens of the Linnisches Bad, we see the lamps springing into light, and the people gayly yet quietly trooping in, while on the soft evening air comes the swell of merry music.
"Stop! stop!" cry I, springing up, excitedly. "Let us go in. I love a band! It is almost as good as a circus. May we, general? Do you mind? Would it bore you?"
Five minutes more, and we are sitting at a little round table, each with a tall green glass of Mai-Trank before us, and a brisk Uhlanenritt in our ears. I look round with a pleasant sense of dissipation. The still, green trees; the cluster of oval lamps, like great bright ostrich-eggs; the countless little tables like our own; the happy social groups; the waiters running madly about with bif-tecks; the great-lidded goblets of amber-colored Bohemian beer; the young Bavarian officers, in light-blue uniforms, at the next table to us—stalwart, fair-haired boys—I should not altogether mind knowing a few of them; and, over all, the arch of suave, dark, evening sky.
"What shall we have for supper?" cry I, vivaciously. "I never can see anybody eating without longing to eat too. Blutwurst! That means black-pudding, I suppose—certainly not that—how they do call a spade a spade in German! By-the-by, what are the soldiers having? Can you see? I think I saw a vision of prawns! I saw things sticking out like their legs. I must find out!"
I rise, on pretense of getting a little wooden stool from under an unoccupied table close to the object of my curiosity, and, as I stoop to pick it up, I fraudulently glance over the nearest warrior's shoulder. My sin finds me out. He turns and catches me in the act, and at the same time a young man—not a warrior, at least not in uniform, but in loose gray British clothes—turns, too, and fixes me with a stony, British stare. I am returning in some confusion, having moreover incidentally discovered that they were not prawns, when to my extreme surprise, I hear my husband addressing the young gentleman in gray.
"Why, Frank, my dear boy, is that you? Who would have thought of seeing you here?"
"As to that," replies the young man, stretching out a ready right hand, "who would have thought of seeing you? What on earth has brought you here?"
Sir Roger laughs, but with a sort of shyness.
"Like the man in the parable, I have married a wife," he says; then, putting his hand kindly on the young fellow's shoulder—"Nancy, you have been wishing that we might meet some one we knew, have not you? Well, here is some one. I suppose that I must introduce you formally to each other. Lady Tempest—Mr. Musgrave."
Despite the searching, and, I should have thought, exhaustive examination of my appearance, that my new friend has already indulged in, he thinks good to look at me again, as he bows, and this time with a sort of undisguisable surprise in his great dark eyes.
"I must apologize," he says, taking off his hat. "I had heard that you were going to be married, but I am so behind the time, have been so out of the way of hearing news, that I did not know that it had come off yet."
He says this with a little of that doubtful stiffness, which sometimes owes its birth to shyness, and sometimes to self-consciousness; but he seems in no hurry to return to his friends, the big, blond soldiers. On the contrary, he draws a chair up to our table.
"Do they ever get prawns here?" say I, with apparent irrelevancy, not being able to disengage my mind from the thought of shell-fish, "or is it too far inland? I am so fond of them, and I fancied that these gentlemen—" (slightly indicating the broad, blue warrior-backs)—"were eating some."
His mouth curves into a sudden smile.
"Was that why you came to look?"
I laugh.
"I did not mean to be seen: that person must have had eyes in the back of his head."
I relapse into silence, and fish for the sprigs of woodruff floating in my Mai-Trank, while the talk passes to Sir Roger. Presently I become aware that the stranger is addressing me by that new title which makes me disposed to laugh.
"Lady Tempest, have you seen those lamps that they have here, in the shape of flowers? Cockney sort of things, but they are rather pretty."
"No," say I, eagerly, dropping my spoon and looking up; "in the shape of flowers? Where?"
"You cannot see them from here," he answers; "they are over there, nearer the river."
"I should like to see them," say I, decisively; "shall we, general?"
"Will you spare Lady Tempest for five minutes?" says the young man, addressing my husband; "it is not a hundred yards off."
At my words Sir Roger had made a slight movement toward rising; but, at the stranger's, he resettles himself in his chair.
"Will
